Philosophy, Cosmology and Religion

Schmidt Number: S-4980

On-line since: 15th June, 2009

CHAPTER VI

TRANSFERENCE FROM THE PSYCHO-SPIRITUAL TO THE PHYSICAL SENSE-LIFE IN
MAN'S DEVELOPMENT

IN the previous studies it was shown how a view of the eternal
psycho-spiritual inner being of man can be attained through inspired
and intuitive approach. Attention was drawn to the fact that the inner
life of man was filled by reflections of cosmic happenings. In the
last survey it was shown how man lives through such cosmic
reconstructions during sleep. Man's inner world becomes the external
world and vice versa: the spiritual part of the external world
becomes an inner world.

During the state of sleep the physical and etheric organisms of man
form an outer world for his psycho-spiritual nature. They remain there
in the same way in which, in waking, they can become again the
instrument of the psycho-spiritual man. Man carries the longing for
these two organisms over into the sleeping state. As shown in the last
review, this longing is connected with those spiritual activities of
the Cosmos which are reflected physically in the appearances of the
moon. Man is only subjected to these lunar activities through his
being part of this earth. The contemplation of that state in which man
finds himself in the purely spiritual world for a certain time before
his turning towards earthly life makes it clear that then he is not
subjected to the influences of these lunar activities.

In this state he does not recognize a physical and etheric
human organism as belonging to him, as he does in sleep. But he
recognizes them in other ways. He sees them as having their
foundations in cosmic worlds, as growing out of the spiritual Cosmos.
He contemplates a spiritual Cosmos which is the spiritual part of the
cell of the physical organism, which at some future time he will put
on. When we talk of a cell in this connection we designate something
which in one sense is opposed to what we usually term cell. By
Cell we usually mean the small physical beginning of a
growing organism. The spiritual organism on the other hand which man
sees in connection with himself in his pre-earthly spiritual state, is
large and contracts continually, as it were, to merge finally with the
physical part of the cell.

In order to represent these relationships clearly we have to make use
of expressions Large and Small. But we must
remember all the time that the happenings of the spiritual world are
spiritual and that for them space, in which physical happenings move,
is non-existent. The expressions used therefore are only similes for
something spiritual, entirely non-spatial, purely qualitative.

During his pre-earthly existence man lives in the cosmic creation
which is the spiritual germ of his future physical organism, and this
spiritual stage is regarded as in unity with the whole of the
spiritual cosmos and reveals itself at the same time as the cosmic
body of the individual human being. Man feels the spiritual cosmos as
his own innate powers. His whole existence consists in his
experiencing himself in this cosmos. But he does not experience only
himself in it. For this cosmic existence does not separate him from
the other life of the cosmos, as does later his physical organism.
Over against this existence he is in a kind of Intuition. The
existence of other spiritual beings is at the same time his own
existence.

Man has his pre-earthly existence in the active recognition of the
spirit-cell of his future physical organism. He himself prepares for
this organism by working in the spirit world on the spirit-cell
together with other spirits in the world of spirits.

As during his existence on earth he perceives through his senses a
physical world round him in which he is active, so in his pre-earthly
existence he perceives his physical organism being built in spirit;
and his activity consists in helping its construction, just as his
activity in the physical world consists in helping to shape the
physical things of the outer world.

In the spirit-cell of the physical human body which the
psycho-spiritual man experiences in his pre-earthly existence, a whole
universe is present, no less manifold than the physical outer world of
the senses. Indeed intuitive knowledge may well say that man,
incorporated in his physical body, though unknown to himself, carries
a universe of such magnificence that the physical world cannot be
remotely compared with it.

This universe it is which man experiences in a spiritual manner in his
pre-earthly state, and in which he is active. He experiences it in its
growth, its mobility, but filled with spiritual beings.

He has a consciousness within this world; with the Powers active in
the growth of this Universe his own are bound up. His consciousness is
filled with the collaboration of these spiritual cosmic powers with
his own power. The state of sleep is in a sense a reconstruction of
his activity.

But in its course of sleep the physical organism exists as an
exclusive form, or system apart from and independent of the
psycho-spiritual man. Here contemplation lacks the active powers
representing the content of consciousness in the pre-earthly state.
Therefore the state remains unconscious.

In the further course of pre-earthly existence the conscious
recognition of the growth of the future earth-organism becomes
fainter. It never disappears completely from view, but it fades by
degrees. It is as if man felt his own cosmic world get further and
further away, as if he was growing out of it. What is at first a
complete fusion with the spiritual beings of the cosmos now becomes
only a revelation of these beings. One might say that while at one
time man had a true intuition of the spiritual world, it
is now changed into a real inspiration, in which his
nature acts upon man, revealing itself from the outside. But with this
a new phase begins within the psycho-spiritual man which might be
identified with the missing and the beginning of the
longing for the lost. Expressions like these are used only
to describe conditions of the supernatural world in terms of the
natural world.

In such a state of missing and longing the
soul of man passes a later period of its pre-earthly existence. It no
longer has consciousness of the full reality of experience of a
spiritual world, but only of a revealed reflection thereof, with, as
it were, less intensity of being.

The human soul is now getting ready to experience the spiritual lunar
activities, which up to now were beyond its sphere. It thus obtains a
being through which it makes itself independent of the other
spirit-beings with whom it lived before. One might say that at
first its experience was permeated by spirit, and by God, and that
later it feels itself as an independent spiritual being; the cosmos is
now felt as an outer world, even though the experiencing of this
revelation of the Cosmos is still a very intense one during the
first phases, and only develops into a fainter one by degrees.

In this experience man therefore leaves the existence permeated by
spirit, and felt as reality, in order to enter one in which he is
faced by a revealed spirit-cosmos. The first phase of this experience
is the reality of that which later on appears as religious learning to
one's perception. The second is the reality of what, if described,
will result in a true Cosmology. For here the physical human organism
is viewed also in its cosmic cell-form without which it cannot be
comprehended.

In the later phases man loses the capacity of viewing the spirit
cosmos, which becomes less clear to the spiritual eye. On
the other hand the experience of the inner soul which is connected
with the spiritual lunar activities grows ever more intense. The human
soul gets ready to receive from outside that which before she
experienced within herself. The spiritual activity that has furthered
the growth of the physical organism which man at first experienced
consciously, is dropped by the organs of his soul, but it is
transferred into the physical activity which reaches its climax in the
reproductive development within the existence on earth. The previous
experience of the human soul is transferred into this development as
its directing force. Now for some time the human soul has its place in
the spiritual world, for she no longer takes part in the shaping of
the physical human organism.

In this phase she becomes ripe to satisfy with the etheric cosmos that
which in her is missing something or longing
for it. She attracts the cosmic ether. And according to the faculties
remaining to her, from her collaboration in the human Universe she
forms her etheric organism. Thus man gets used to his etheric organism
before his physical organism receives him on earth. The events
belonging to earthly existence and following an accomplished
conception, and separated from the course of the last phases of the
pre-earthly life of the soul, have brought the growth of the physical
organism to physical cell-formation. With this the human soul which
meanwhile has taken over her etheric organism, can unite. She can
unite with it through the power of continued longing and
man thus begins his earthly career.

The experience of the human soul in taking unto itself the etheric
organism, the increase in growth, as it were, of this organism out of
the world-ether, is an experience foreign to earth, for it is passed
through without the physical organism. It has it, however, as its
longed-for object. That which happens in the experience of
the little child is an unconscious memory of this experience. But it
is an active memory, an unconscious working of the physical organism
which was once the inner world of the soul and now is the outer case
of it. The formative creative work which man unconsciously applies to
his own organism during its growth is the visible sign of this active
memory. What philosophy is searching for, and what she can only
achieve as an inner reality by fully conscious imaginative treatment
of the child's earliest experience, lies in this active unconscious
memory. This explains in some measure the nature of philosophy which
sometimes seems nearer and sometimes further away from the world.